December 1998
Here is it! Paul and Susan's 1998 Christmas letter. Are you sitting down? We don't want to be sued for any injury this missive may cause when you fall asleep out of any boredom occurring while attempting to read it! So get comfortable.
Thanksgiving is over, the calendar says it is early December, but it feels anything but like Christmas or late fall in Wisconsin. The sun is shining and today the temperature is in the mid-fifties, again. Perhaps we moved and no one told us?!? Hmmm.... wonder if we will have a white Christmas?
The Lord has blessed and enriched us very much this past year... and years gone by. We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in September. It doesn't seem possible so many years have passed but they have been happy and busy ones. I wonder, does this mean the honeymoon is over and we have to start acting grown-up?
We were delighted to have my sister Sara come and visit us for Thanksgiving. She lives in Slippery Rock, PA and works in Pittsburgh. We had Thanksgiving dinner with Jeff and Carol Reitz... and Jacob and Jackson. We had such an enjoyable evening. After dinner and after Jackson was put to bed, the rest of us play Balderdash, a game in which the players have to give a description to a word. Jacob was amazing. He is in kindergarten and could write the letters to the words as they were spelled. Then one adult or another would take him to another room and write down his definition of the word for him. His definitions were very good and actually were chosen several times as the correct answer. We best watch out, once he starts writing on his own, he will be beating all of us adults. He already can clean our clocks when we play his game of Concentration.
Paul traveled on business to Monterey, Mexico this past week with the General Manager and one of the owners of PTI. I can't honestly say he was excited to go, but most certainly was excited to return home. His job goes well there.
Paul and I took two trips to New York to see our families this year. I had to skip my Spring Annual Daughterly Duty trip this year. I normally take the trip in March but things were a bit unsettled at Church. We hired an Interim Pastor, Skip Hay, at that time and I felt I needed to be around at that time. We did go in August while my sister Rose and her daughter Aiko were home from Mexico, and went again over the Halloween weekend.
While Rose was home, she was offered a job in the Olean area and accepted the position. She works as office manager. I guess she can earn a better income there than what she could in Mexico, but as of yet, Alex, her husband, has not been able to join his family. There have been hold-ups in the processing of his immigration paperwork. She and Aiko, and I guess perhaps Mom and Dad will be going to Mexico after the Christmas holidays.
The search continues for a Senior Pastor. Our church is an "independent" church in that we have support from our district and national conference but the hiring of a pastor is our job. The conferences provide us with names of pastors who are looking for churches and have screened candidates who match the profile of the desires of our specific church. Our search committee then does its own final interviewing process. I believe that they have narrowed the field to two or three candidates and if I understood correctly, they are now interviewing. I guess it is still highly unlikely we will have a Senior Pastor before May. I guess of the "finalists" they have chosen, there are children in school and most likely any decisions to physically move will be at the end of the school year.
My job at Church continues to occupy much of my energy and time. The church now has a web page(http://www.dwave.net/~bethbapt) and I have been working to learn how to keep it updated and fresh. I have enjoyed the process but get frustrated that I still am unable to totally work without needed Paul's expertise. Thus, much of the work on it has been done at home. But, all in all, I am quite pleased with it. New pages for our youth ministries are currently in the works.
I return Monday to the City to assist them during the real estate tax collection period. I had applied for a (different) regular part-time position with them this fall. But was not called for the position. I did make the cut for the final interviews but that was the last I heard from them. Oh well.
Lady and I did not do much during 1998 other than just trail ride. My riding buddy, Julie, moved to Kansas. She was offered a position managing a farm there. Courtney (about 4th grade) and Dandy rode with Lady and I quite frequently and we even loaded the horses up a couple of times and trailered to enjoy different trails. I also made a new "horsey" acquaintance this year. Jeff and Carol's next door neighbor has a horse and she and I were able, after weeks of scheduling, to get out one weekend. Hopefully, we will be able to find more time to get together next summer.
We hope you will be filled will the fullness of Christmas as you celebrate this year. God bless.
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